A large and growing number of households have pets. Studies have shown that pet owners often treat their pets as they treat close friends and relatives. Owners include pets in holiday celebrations, and often refer to themselves as the parents of their pets. Such affinity is tangibly demonstrated in the rapid growth of a multibillion dollar pet industry with an increasing demand for pet products that mimic human products.
Health conscious consumers are also demanding higher quality pet food that is not only closer in ingredient quality to human food, but also looks less processed and more natural. However, conventional pet food producers seldom focus on the visual impact of pet food that heightens aesthetic appeal to a purchaser, even if they integrate advanced ingredients more commonly found in food produced for human consumption.
Meat patties and related products for both human and animal consumption are commonly made using forming processes and systems, including a forming or mold plate and knockout cups. Typically, a meat emulsion is conveyed into cavities on a mold plate, and knocked out with cups that travel in a direction perpendicular to the process. Usually, patty forming plates have cavities with vertical sides which require vertically reciprocating knockout cups. With multiple cavities and knockout cups, the typical forming machine processes large quantities of food in an hour, and produce products that have the familiar disc-like shape of frozen hamburger patties. There have been some minor variations to this traditional process for meat patties, particularly for human consumption, where patties having more natural and irregular edges are formed, to cater to the demand of high end restaurants and their patrons. These newer techniques have been produced by forming meat under pressure in an irregularly shaped die cavity followed, by pressing the top and bottom surfaces together.
Processes used for human grade food are rarely suitable for the pet food market which has different requirements. For instance, human grade sausages or patties are usually designed for relatively short shelf lives. Pet food, on the other hand, is engineered to be stored (if necessary) for eighteen months after manufacturing before it is consumed, and therefore requires a substantially longer shelf life. Human grade sausage patties, once opened, become stale in less than a week unless refrigerated. Pet treats, however, are expected to last for up to three months after the package is opened, without refrigeration. The delay in the storage and consumption of pet foods requires more careful ingredient selection, preservation of freshness with antioxidants, processing that avoids insects and rancidity, careful packaging and storage.
Since high moisture meat products tend to spoil quickly, such products are usually sold in cans in the pet food market, and are more typical as cat food. Pet food or kibble with low moisture content (typically less than 10%), are dry and hard, and less palatable to pets. Semi-moist pet food, typically having moisture content between 15 and 30%, is very popular with animals since it has a texture and palatability that is closest to meat. However, as discussed, semi-moist pet food is difficult to store in a stable condition, without canning or refrigeration, for long periods.
Skinned sausage links for human consumption are made from beef, veal, pork, lamb, poultry and wild game, using a unique blend of old procedures and newer, highly-mechanized processes, However, the basic procedure of stuffing meat into casings to make sausages still remains commercially viable today. Skinned sausages are generally perceived to be of even higher quality than formed sausage patties for human consumption. Skinned sausages are typically sliced only after they are cooked, otherwise maintenance of slice integrity is difficult. When sliced, typically by hand before a meal, the sausages are typically cut into angular slices. Hand slicing further conveys to consumers the impression of premium quality and more personalized food preparation.
There is no economical process that can produce high volumes of sliced sausages that appear to have been sliced off the sausage log for human consumption, much less for pet food consumption. Thus, neither conventional pet food manufacturing processes nor traditional food production techniques used for human consumption can meet the requirements of cost-effectively manufacturing slices of semi-moist, shelf-stable, meat patties that appear to have been cut at an angle from a conventional round skinned sausage log. Moreover, there are no economic methods for forming such angled sausage slices in a continuous manufacturing process.